My 99-cent Amazon Dash Button arrived today and I was excited to get a look at it. The little device feels very sturdy. Unfortunately, my wife told me she had no interest in ordering laundry detergent by pressing a button, so I had to figure out what to do with it.

I decided to open it up and do a teardown. For science, of course.

The FCC ID is 2ACBE-0610. Documents in the FCC filing appears to confirm that this is indeed an 802.11b/g/n device (not Bluetooth, as initially thought).

It has a large white button with a red/green LED.

FCC ID: 2ACBE-610 / Model JK76PL

Removing the back of the case reveals a Li-ion AAA battery

Can anyone identify the wireless radio chip?
Other interesting components?

Whether or not you find it useful to order your laundry detergent at the touch of a button, this has to be one of the least expensive 802.11 devices ever produced.

I wonder what the actual component costs are? I think it’s safe to say more than the 99 cents that I paid for it.

The four pins near the upper left look suspiciously similar to a serial connection. Hopefully that tempting white box with the letters TX1 next to it isn’t a red herring. Maybe have a go at sticking a bus pirate or usb to serial on those? Maybe you’ll get a console. See if you can trace which pins are ground and power from those four to figure out if it’s 3v3 or 5v. If it is a 3v3 serial uart then hooking up a 5v ftdi might let the smoke out.

Mark, b/g/n doesn’t imply 5Ghz. b/g is all 2.4Ghz, and n can operate across both, or be confined to just one or the other. Typically if you see a device touting b/g/n, it’s going to be 2.4Ghz only, and a device touting a/b/g/n will be dual-band.

You need to pry up that meet shetal under the QR code. Then we need images containing readable numbers on the IC chips. Otherwise, so far the only thing that looks promising to me is the row of 5 pads above the QR code could be I²C bus or a programming “header”. Then again, it looks like the traces are going to an unpopulated SOIC or SOP area.

The Amazon Dash that I received today is configured via your smartphone and the Amazon Shopping app. It utilizes the phone’s speaker to send the data to the Dash via a microphone inside the small hole on the front. Once this is done it is able to work on the local wifi network. I hope to find another use for it.

U6 (25P16) is a 16MBit flash chip that goes for US$0.63 in 1000 quantities.
U5 (STM32F205RG) is the 32bit ARM microcontroller that appears to go for between US$5-8 in 1000 quantities
The markings on the wifi chip cover don’t yield any results when searched for.

I’m guessing there’s at least $10-12 worth of components on this little guy.

Of course, now they’re out of stock. I’m sure all the hardware hackers bought them up when this came out. 😀